Monday, October 29, 2012

When we started telling everyone about our pregnancy, we got a lot of the typical (and super personal!) questions, like “were you trying for a while?”, “was this planned or a surprise?”, etc. A lot of people find these questions annoying for a multitude of reasons, but for us they were even more difficult to answer. I haven’t talked about this to anyone but both sets of parents and siblings, but this isn’t our first pregnancy. This pregnancy will (hopefully) result in what people call a "rainbow" baby, a baby that comes after a loss.

When we started thinking about having kids, we envisioned exactly the timeline we’re at right now, get pregnant in the Fall of 2012 (ok we actually got pregnant in July, but close enough). However, when I went off the pill I was having extremely long and unpredictable cycles. I’m not kidding, this was the pattern: 32, 48, 48, 54 days. My doctor suspected I might have some issues, so we decided to try right away, she told me that after 6 months of trying she would refer me to a specialist. Imagine our surprise and delight when we got pregnant that first cycle in February 2012. It was actually pretty shocking. We told our parents and siblings right away, and I went to see my doctor and booked an ultrasound for when I should have been about 7 weeks.

At the ultrasound we found out that the baby measured only 6 weeks, but it had a heartbeat! The ultrasound tech didn’t seem fazed when I told her that was a week smaller than I thought. My husband left feeling positive, there was a heartbeat after all. I wasn’t so sure, and for the next week and a half, I was pretty pessimistic about the whole thing. A week and a half later, at what should have been just over 8 weeks, I started spotting. It was just a tiny amount and it stopped pretty quickly, but off we went to the hospital anyways.

The hospital we went to didn’t have ultrasound techs on duty during off hours, so the ER doctor attempted to use the machine and told us she was pretty sure she saw a good heartbeat. We left feeling pretty good, but the next morning scheduled an ultrasound at the clinic just to be sure. Everything was not great. Unfortunately, there was no heartbeat and the baby measured about 6 weeks. I had what they so insensitively call a “missed abortion” in medical terms. It basically means that the baby died, but my body didn’t recognize it and carried on.

After all of that, it took me a really long time to feel even slightly normal again. Actually, even though I am pregnant again, I still mourn and grieve for the baby we lost. It still hurts to think about, and we just passed what would have been our due date last week. I know this is something I will never forget, and even though it will fade, it’s a scar I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

So, questions like “have you been trying long?”, and “was this planned?” are especially difficult for me to answer, since no one really knows what we went through. I want to say, no, we haven’t technically been trying long, but we’ve gone to hell and back, and then I want to say YES, you have no idea how planned and how wanted this little baby is. But you can’t really say those things, because people are just trying to be friendly and ask what they think are the right questions. I will never ever ask someone a question like this again, because you just don’t know what anyone has been through to get where they are now.

I didn’t put this out there for pity, I put it out there for awareness. I wanted to write a little bit about this because I really feel like miscarriage is such a taboo topic that nobody wants to talk about. It’s almost like there’s still a little bit of that old mentality, like if you miscarry a baby you’re somehow less of a woman, or less desirable because what if you can’t procreate? No man will want you! Obviously, this is not really the case in this day and age, but it just seems like we all still sort of believe that, so we don’t really talk about this. I just want to put this out there, and offer my support to anyone who might be going through something similar. Please don’t hesitate to contact me (eatbakesewlove@gmail.com)!!

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

My husband and I were able to go to Halifax to spend Thanksgiving with my family this year, and it was so much fun! My parents had just bought a 27 foot boat, so we went on two trips around the harbour on that.

We also had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner filled with good food, and great company! I was so excited to have some of my mom's (best in the whole world if you ask me!) pumpkin pie. With fresh whipped cream. Yummmm.

All in all it was a great long weekend! Can't wait to go back at Christmas. I think the Christmas trip will be my last trip home before the baby comes, I'm planning on really savouring it. Too bad it won't exactly be boat weather... damn you winter!!!

I know American Thanksgiving is coming up soon, what are your plans? If you're Canadian, did you do anything special this year?

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Hey everyone! I have been meaning to start some other posts for a couple of weeks now, but I am still feeling pretty sick and I have very little energy to sit at my computer. I hope you're all going to bear with me and stick around, because I absolutely promise this blog is going to get more interesting!!!

I'm not sure what happened, but apparently I didn't write a post for 13 weeks! I'm actually pretty sure I did, but I can't find it anywhere. Oh well, we'll just skip right on over to 14 weeks. I'll just put the picture for 13 weeks at the bottom of this one, before the 14 week photo, how's that? :)

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

This post was written on September 25th, 2011
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How far along?: 12 weeksTotal weight gain/loss: +2 pounds, I guess I am playing catchup! Either that or I had a lot of salty food this past weekend!

The Bump: Same as last week, no one but those closest to me can really tell, but there's definitely the beginnings of something there!!

What I’m excited about/looking forward to: Same as last week, mostly I am just looking forward to the 2nd trimester so I can hopefully stop feeling so terrible.

Symptoms: Again, same as last week, all day sickness, fatigue, mild headaches, and this annoying stretchy feeling. It feels like I've done an intense ab workout every day. My midwife says it's normal!

Belly Button in or out?: Definitely in.

Food Cravings/Aversions: Still trying to hide veggies in things, I am eating my mom's soup for lunch, and we made turkey chili with loads of veggies in the slowcooker this week. I am hoping I can stomach it! It's so hard trying to stay healthy. I have been craving a lot of salty food, like chips, and gummy candy. What I miss: Feeling like a normal human being.

Milestones: We started telling some extended family this past weekend, it was fun! Everyone is so excited. We're working on telling everyone else (friends, coworkers, etc) and hopefully very soon I'll be able to "come out" on my blog :)
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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

I just wanted to say thank you for all of the love and support yesterday!! I just love the blog community :)

Since the big news is out, I thought I would start recapping each week of my pregnancy like I see on some other blogs. I am hoping to keep pregnancy related stuff to 1 or 2 posts a week, since I know I have a lot of readers who are probably not so interested :).

Anyway, it won't take long to get caught up because I didn't start recording my pregnancy in any way until week 11!!

This post was written on September 19th, 2012
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How far along?: 11 weeks, 1 day

Total weight gain/loss: -3 pounds, must be from the all day sickness because I am not in any way shape or form eating healthy.

The Bump: No one but those closest to me can really tell, but there's definitely the beginnings of something there!!

What I’m excited about/looking forward to: Mostly I am just looking forward to the 2nd trimester so I can hopefully stop feeling so terrible.

Food Cravings/Aversions: Can't stand even the thought of an uncooked vegetable. I'm trying to increase my veggie intake by hiding them in my food. My mom made an amazing chicken soup full of veggies, and that seems good. She also made me lasagne with spinach and tomatoes. I don't really have any cravings though, not yet!

What I miss: Feeling like a normal human being.

Milestones: We heard the heartbeat at our appointment today!! We had seen it via ultrasound at 8 weeks, but we finally got to hear the sound and it was so sweet :). My husband says he could listen to it all day long!
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Monday, October 8, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my Canadian readers! My husband and I have been in my hometown and it's been an awesome long weekend. Halifax is a wonderful place to visit, and the weather has just been amazing.

I know it's been a long time since I have been active on this here blog, but guys, I swear I have a good excuse. You see, this happened:

We're pregnant!!! Come April 2013 we're going to be first time parents :). We're over the moon with excitement, but my all day horrible sickness has prevented me from doing much blogging or even blog reading. I hope you can understand, and I am hoping to be back in full swing now!